Hello Nerve readers,

Sarah here, bringing you our Tuesday edition, including news in our weekly hotlist of a film dropping on Netflix that has cheered me up no end (clue: it revisits the best French TV series of the century). 

You could well have missed the phalanx of far-right thugs taking to the streets in Kent and Hampshire over the weekend, given the government’s tepid response. While Andy Burnham’s hot new TikTok content yesterday focused on school uniform costs and cowboy builders, No 10 finally put out a press release denouncing “thuggish” behaviour.

Patriot Platform are not merely thugs, they are a highly organised group of vigilantes setting out to intercept small boat crossings while blocking roads and intimidating the public. We wanted to know more about them and are publishing a definitive explainer of the group from Hope not Hate’s Nick Lowles, including his organisation’s discovery that the police, who initially described the Kent march as a  “spontaneous protest” (yes, these men just happened to fall out of vans wearing matching costumes and balaclavas), had in fact received warnings.

There were extraordinary scenes in the House of Commons today when Ed Miliband announced sanctions against "ethnic cleansing” in Israel’s West Bank. According to Middle East Eye, he has “torn up the foreign policy rulebook”, setting himself squarely against the US and Israel. 

Miliband said he agreed with Burnham that Labour had “not done enough” on Israel’s military actions in Palestine and “should have acted earlier” – a clear rebuke to Starmer’s record on Israel, which Sangita Myska writes about today in her latest column. Links to all our pieces are below.

We are super busy this week preparing for forthcoming IRL fun. Tonight, Carole is in conversation with our columnist Cory Doctorow in Brighton – we will bring you an extract from Cory’s new book, The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI, soon.

And this Saturday evening (12 September) we are delighted that the Nerve’s Lucia Osborne-Crowley is hosting a screening and Q&A at Curzon Mayfair in London of Alex Gibney’s new documentary Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie, which tells the story of the 2022 attack on the novelist and his subsequent recovery. Lucia will be in conversation with Salman and his wife, the American writer and visual artist Rachel Eliza Griffiths – and later this month we will publish an in-depth interview with them both. The screening is at 6pm with the Q&A at 8pm. More info and tickets available to buy here.

The drinks and snacks are ordered for our founders’ thank-you party next week to celebrate our one-year anniversary. If you are a founder and have not received our invite yet it will probably be in your spam folder – or just send a request on reply to this email and we will send you the details.

Also, tickets are on sale for our live journalism takeover at the King’s Cross Vision Festival on Sunday 27 September. We’ve got some very exciting news about the line-up to announce later this week. Discount codes for members to order tickets here can be found in last Friday’s newsletter email (4 September).

Here are the links to today’s pieces:

Looking at the footage of black-uniformed young men in balaclavas shutting down a major port with impunity, “it is hard not to draw the conclusion that the police and Home Office seem to be incapable of an appropriate response to the threat of far-right violence”, writes Hope Not Hate’s Nick Lowles. The authorities’ feeble response needs to get a lot tougher, he writes, because what happened this week will “will most certainly have encouraged the mob”. Read his report here.

Starmer's decision to announce his resignation as an MP on the day of Andy Burnham's maiden speech as prime minister was a final, petulant demonstration of the tin ear that defined his premiership, says the Nerve's political columnist. The dreadful policy decisions of this former human rights lawyer included prioritising welfare cuts and the proscription of direct action protesters Palestine Action. Burnham must choose Labour's candidate to stand for Starmer’s vacated seat wisely, says Sangita, and leave cynicism at the door. Read her column here.

Two edge-of-your-seat dramas from US-based writers come highly recommended in this week’s hotlist. Playwright Tracey Scott Wilson’s razor-sharp The Story has just opened at the National Theatre, a timely exploration of racial politics and fake news with Black Panther’s Letitia Wright leading an exceptional cast. Meanwhile, Marlon James’s unflinching sixth novel, the Booker-longlisted The Disappearers, centres around a group of queer men in Jamaica who secretly begin rehearsals for a play. But if what you’re really after is some light-hearted Gallic escapism, then Call My Agent! The Movie hits Netflix on Thursday and I’m assured it’s as fabulous as the original hit show set in a fictional Parisian showbiz agency. Find these and more music, theatre and art tips in this week’s hotlist.

Thanks for reading. We are back with our bumper weekend edition on Friday, including a piece about the shocking acquittal of the man accused of involvement in Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder, an interview with Lyse Doucet and a deep dive into the Bayeux Tapestry.

See you then! Please do forward this newsletter to any friends you think might like it,

Sarah